They don't become voltage levels, they are represented by voltage levels. There's nothing that converts a 1 to a particular voltage level. In TTL logic for example (an old type of transistor based logic circuits) it has a voltage swing of 0 to 5 Volts and a 1 is usually defined as 5 volts.
There's a think called a J-K flip flop that is worth having a look at - it's the simplest memory element conceptually and it takes a number of transistors to actually implement (6 I think from memory in TTL - I may be wrong - it was a long time ago).
The software / hardware boundary you speak of is a matter of definition and different people would define it differently. For a hardware developer, they would probably regard microcode as software, but an application developer would regard it as part of the hardware.
That's a very unusual way to phrase the question, there are many steps between code and voltage in a CPU.
In brief, Code is stored in memory as a series of 1's and 0's.
Now the memory is stored as different voltage levels in transistors - 5 volts for a 1 and 0 Volts for a 0 for argument sake (but the voltage to logic value is arbitary).
Now the CPU executes the code by walking along different pieces of memory and executing different instructions depending on the value of those pieces of memory.
There's a lot more. For a start Google 'Introductory Digital Electronics' or 'Introductory Computer Architecture' and this might get you started.
Internships are also good at keeping out the wrong sort of people. Lets face it - if you can't afford to go to work and not get paid then you're not really from a good family, and we don't want the wrong sort of people invading our jobs. Someone with a few internships is obviously from the right stock and we can safely employ them, providing of course they go to our club.
Get a job in the industry and spend 20 years learning your craft? Look at it from the other side - why would you let someone with no experience touch the core of your multi million dollar business?
Alternatively find a new industry in which no one has 20 years experience and use your native intelligence. If I was starting now I'd probably look at biotech or robotics somewhere.
There's a think called a J-K flip flop that is worth having a look at - it's the simplest memory element conceptually and it takes a number of transistors to actually implement (6 I think from memory in TTL - I may be wrong - it was a long time ago).
In a real cpu D-Ram stores the bits (1's and 0's) and it works by storing a charge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_random-access_memory
The software / hardware boundary you speak of is a matter of definition and different people would define it differently. For a hardware developer, they would probably regard microcode as software, but an application developer would regard it as part of the hardware.
hth